Edilizia Sostenibile e Sicura

Dymond e Proxima: two winners made in Polimi

The first edition of the ‘Champions League’ for startups in Lombardy was won by two Polimi research groups

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The competition

Sustainable and safe construction is the competition promoted by the Lombardy Region and Musa scarl, now in its first edition, created to promote the most innovative solutions for the construction sector, with a particular focus on safety, efficiency, and sustainability of materials and processes.

The competition aims to encourage the creation of new businesses and innovative startups in the construction sector, to support innovation and development in response to the specific needs of the corporate companies operating in this field, with a view to co-innovation.

It is aimed at university students, doctoral students, PhD researchers, researchers, research fellows/scholarship holders, and professors.

The prize money for each category is €150,000.

The winners

On November 13, the winners of this first edition were announced; two of them belong to the ABC Department, Dymond and Proxima.

  • Dymond is structural monitoring software that automatically detects and locates anomalies in infrastructure in real time. The members of Dymond are: Marco Pirrò, Ana Avramova, Eleonora Bruschi, Paolo Borlenghi, Carmelo Gentile.
  • Proxima is a modular ecosystem of plug-in techno-modules, capable of evolving over time to adapt to different needs and functions. The group is under the scientific coordination of ABC professor Giovanni Castaldo, with Joseph di Pasquale, Elena Mussinelli, Andrea Tartaglia, Gianpaolo Cugola, and Roberto Mandurino. Since March 2025, Proxima has also been accredited as a spin-off of the Politecnico di Milano.

Winning the award will enable further development of the projects, including new complementary patents, towards increasing industrialization of the construction process, reducing costs, time, and carbon footprint, and creating flexible and efficient buildings.

The “Sustainable and Safe Construction” competition was held alongside “StartCup Lombardia” and “Chimica Verde Lombardia per un futuro sostenibile” (Green Chemistry Lombardy for a sustainable future).